Over the last few years, there have been parallel conversations about candidate experience and talent experience. As thinking has developed, it has become obvious that these two things aren’t mutually exclusive and are in fact elements of an overall talent experience.
I recently undertook a research project in collaboration with Mervyn Dinnen and with the support of Saba Software, to explore the implications of a joined-up talent experience on talent acquisition. We spoke to several employers who are doing some exciting work in this area and have recently published our findings in a free whitepaper.
My guest in this episode is Duncan Miller from Saba Software. Duncan has some great insights to share on talent experience and how it might develop in the future.
In the interview, we discuss:
- What is talent experience and why is it so important
- How closely should candidate experience and employee experience be aligned
- What are employers doing to create world-class talent experiences
- The role of technology and its limitations
- Early onboarding
- Understanding the moments that matter most and the practicalities of personalization
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:17]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 220 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Over the last few years there have been parallel conversations about candidate experience and employee experience. As the thinking has developed, it’s become very clear that these aren’t mutually exclusive and are in fact two elements of an overall talent experience. I recently undertook a research project in collaboration with Mervyn Dinnen and supported by Saba Software to explore the implications of a joined up talent experience on talent acquisition. We spoke to a number of employers who are doing really interesting work in this area and we’ve recently published our findings in a free white paper. I’ll tell you how to download the white paper later in the show, but if you can’t wait that long, then there is a link in the show notes. My guest this week is Duncan Miller from Sarba Software. Duncan has some great insights into talent experience and how it might develop in the future. Enjoy the interview. Hi Duncan, and welcome to the podcast.
Duncan Miller [00:01:31]:
Hey, how are you doing there, Matt?
Matt Alder [00:01:32]:
Very good, very good.
Matt Alder [00:01:33]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Duncan Miller [00:01:39]:
So my name’s Duncan Miller. I’m the marketing leader here in EMEA for Cyber Software. We’re an organization that provides technology solutions that help our customers create a great environment to work in. I’ve got a particular passion for this, having worked in HR and HR technology for several years now and particularly being a marketer. As I see more and more convergence between marketing and between HR processes, we start to treat candidates, employees, learners, much more like customers. So I’m really, really excited to be here today, Matt, and to join you on your podcast.
Matt Alder [00:02:12]:
So the topic that we’re talking about in our conversation is talent Experience. What is talent experience and why is it important?
Duncan Miller [00:02:23]:
So I think it’s one of these words. It’s quite a buzz in our community at the moment, especially around technology and those focused on HR processes. Ultimately, I think experience is a word that’s very prevalent in all areas of marketing and consumerism at the moment. I think experience is about the perception a person has around a particular encounter or particular event that they’re having. And in the context of hr, I suppose it’s the perception an employee has of an organization that they work for and its employer brand. And when I talk about the employee, I think it isn’t just current employees, but it also features past Employees and potentially future employees as well.
Matt Alder [00:03:06]:
So I suppose picking up on that point, for years we’ve been talking about the candidate experience and researching the candidate experience and kind of exploring how employers improve it. The fact that we’re still talking about it kind of indicates that there might be a lot of work still to do in that area. How does is talent experience in recruitment? How does that differ from the candidate experience that we’ve all been talking about for some time?
Duncan Miller [00:03:35]:
I think, yeah, that’s a fair point. Candidate experience. For a long time we understood that in order for us to be successful and to get the best candidates and for those people to come into our business with a positive mind frame, we’ve understood that candidate experience is really important in order getting better quality higher. So we associated the candidate experience and how good that was and how seamless that was, and with better quality of hire and people then retaining and spending longer time in your business. So the idea of this within the wider talent experience is that we are now looking at other journeys that an employee takes in addition to this. And this happens very much in the learning world, where they’re talking very much about learning experiences and how people want to learn and develop themselves. And the talent experience is about understanding all of this talent or employee life cycle and the different experiences that we can do to augment that relationship between the organization and the individual, the employee.
Matt Alder [00:04:33]:
So from a, I suppose from a candidate experience perspective, that part of the talent experience, in an ideal world, how far should that align with the kind of the rest of the talent experience, the employee experience of actually working at the organization?
Duncan Miller [00:04:52]:
We need to take it a little bit back to what is the critical strategies for talent that an organization needs to deploy. So are hiring people a major priority? Is that critical element of your business is being able to find high quality, really differentiated talent. So if we think about professional services organizations, people are their biggest asset. So if that’s the case, how competitive is the market that they’re working in, then they need to be better than those organizations next to them in order to secure that talent. So if that’s a feature, then yes, you need to have a really strong candid experience. Similarly, if you’re looking at a generational workforce that’s very young or very millennial, then having a digital experience to support that which is mobile enabled, again is really important. I think if you’re more focused on that, actually you’ve got a good community of employees within your organization, but you need to develop them, then actually learning experiences are more important or if you’ve got a very widespread workforce who are not necessarily based in offices or very remote, then you need to promote a sense of community through digital channels and that employee experience. So I guess depending what the needs of the organization is and how they are flexing their talent, strategies to deliver business outcomes will be where they add their areas of focus of whether a strong candidate experience or a new hire experience is important. And as mentioned, within this talent experience, there’s a breadth of individual experiences and touch points that we recognize as being part of the talent journey. Candidate experience is just one of the experiences that are featured within the talent acquisition part of the journey. There’s also experiences for hiring managers that allow them to be fast and effective. There’s also experiences that are before the candidate. So how do people engage with your employer brand? What are the stories that other people are talking to? And these experiences within recruitment are not restricted to candidates. They also go into new hires. So when you join the organization, does it actually match the wonderful brand and wonderful organization you think you’re joining? Does that experience stop there? Because actually, you’ve got a pretty average employee experience. I guess the idea now is that candid experience is an element of the wider talent experience, and it should be considered against your business priorities and it should be connected to the other experiences which, you know, are priority for people within your organization.
Matt Alder [00:07:20]:
So I suppose, you know, picking up on something that you, that you said then, in terms of, you know, where does a talent, where does talent experience start and where does it finish? I suppose the, the temptation would be to think that, well, talent experience starts, you know, at the start of the recruitment process when, you know, someone’s applied, you know, someone’s applying for a job, and it finishes when they, you know, when they’ve sort of resigned and left that company. Is that the case or should we be thinking about talent experience in sort of different, broader terms?
Duncan Miller [00:07:53]:
So I think you could look at it, as you said, as a formal start point being outlined as when you apply for a job at a company. But I think it’s probably a little more subtle than that. I think more and more recruitment functions and talent acquisition functions are understanding the need to develop their employer value proposition. And part of that is the promotion of the values that they represent as an organization and the pushing of these values through the individuals that work in their organization. The building of the shop windows of career sites and the content, what it means to be part of that culture. Now people are able to interact with this through peers, through their networks, through targeted Advertising way before they probably ever consider being part of a job at that organization or applying to a job at that organisation. So I think you need to think about those kind of visitors or those unseen candidates and those unpotential employees that are existing out there. And you may want to target them way before they ever apply for it because you’ve sourced their profile and the sourcing something that’s really through the introduction of cross platform search through various social websites, becoming more and more targeted. So I think we need to consider the fact that people like with any brand may be well aware of your organization where before they ever engage with them efficiently. So the start point can be through a number of interactions that we’re probably not in control of. And that’s why it’s important that we build experiences that reflect what it’s really like to work with an organization. You then of course then it starts when somebody applies to your business for a petition and there we can manage that we’re in control of that we’re able to run them through a selection process I guess that runs all the way through the selection process to hiring and onboarding. And then we come into the more traditional employee experiences that we understand and need to develop our employees there that need to manage their performance. But where does it end from the recruitment perspective? I guess it probably doesn’t end because even when somebody leaves your organization and you off board them, they’ve got a particular set of skills that made them the right person to work in your organization in the first place. And it’s probably wise to say that you want to continue to engage them and monitor their careers as alumni of your business because there may be a point in the future where they become someone that you would like to work in your business again and that you and they would like to work for you again. And it’s also important when we consider the power of the word of mouth that people leave with a positive experience. They feel that their time even maybe short or long within your business added value to career, that they were appreciated and that they move on as an alumni or a friend of your organization with the door open to return if it mutually suits both parties.
Matt Alder [00:10:46]:
One of the advantages that you guys have as a kind of a vendor in the market is you get to, you know, look at what lots of different employers are doing. What are you seeing your clients doing to create world class talent experiences.
Duncan Miller [00:11:06]:
So as mentioned, as we talked about previously, organizations are already in the areas that are critical to their business and have been for a long time thinking about how they offer better experiences. So for a long time I think Josh Burstyn talked about this transition between the talent management, which was focused on company outcomes and how to create more efficiency from your talent, how to move them and get better visibility of the KPIs and the performance, and this shift to talent experience overall, which is much more focused on the individual and the journeys that they want to take and that relationship between creating journeys that engage and motivate and push people to be better within their roles and then the benefits that it drives from a business side to the outcomes it drives. So organizations for a long time in the areas that we talked about which are critical to them, I need to hire people to be successful in my business or I need to be able to upskill and develop new people into my business very fast. They have understood that those touch points are important for a very, very long time. What we’re seeing now as vendors, and we need to be aware always as vendors that we’re not here to deliver the talent experience for the organization. We’re here to provide the way to an infrastructure, to track it and to help provide structure to it. But it goes way beyond the things that we’re able to offer in terms of technology isn’t going to give you a great culture, but it may help you automate some process a bit so you can bring some consistency to it. But the thing that people are really doing to deliver world class talent experience is now saying, well, okay, we need to think about these experiences in coordination with one another. So it’s not good enough to just say, well, I’m the head of resourcing and I’m focused on a candidate experience and focus on giving hiring managers the tools they need and focus on getting people in the door for new hire experiences. But once they’re in, I don’t care what they do anymore. It’s not enough to do that. Organizations now need to be connecting these experiences to understand where you can get better value from it. So thinking about those that may be not successful within an application form, instead of saying, well, okay, we didn’t quite make it this time, but how can then we use the capabilities we have on the learning side to say, well, okay, you didn’t make it this time. And through maybe some gamification in the application form, we’ve assessed what your skills are and why you didn’t make it. But actually here’s some learning from our LXP to give you the opportunity to make up those skills and to develop those skills over time. So that you’re ready next time that you maybe want to apply for a job in ol. Now that would be really valuable for an organization. So people are starting to begin to think about how can they join the capability they have for learning for employee experience. How can we start the onboarding process earlier so that we’re starting to introduce our company culture right from the outset through job descriptions that are giving authentic user generated insights into what it’s like to work in that company and their job descriptions and then building that out and starting to introduce members of the team through the onboarding process for people that may be successful, maybe not successful yet. So they’re thinking about how can they take capabilities and in different areas of the talent journey and transfer these and add value to other areas. So I think the big thing is that organizations and we think about the learning and the recruitment spaces are very carved out and have been from HR and they’re really successful in delivering business outcomes. But what additional value can we add by joining these user journeys together so that we’re offering an experience for that employee that is more than just working through an application or a recruitment process. It’s more than just developing my career within an organization. Maybe we can connect it to our open jobs. When we’re looking from a career and career succession perspective, we can be looking and profiling and developing our skills in line for future jobs that will come up and then we’re considered as part of the talent pool because we already have their full CV or profile and making that journey seamlessly that you don’t need to submit a CV for an internal job because we’ve got your full progression and your full performance history. So I think the bit is there is taking these organizations that are best in class in areas of talent acquisition, learning, performance and thinking about how we can join these journeys together to enhance the experience for the individual even more.
Matt Alder [00:15:33]:
So a follow on question from that and you’ve probably already answered some of this already, but for organizations who are starting to think about their overall talent experience for the for the first time, what would your advice be to them?
Duncan Miller [00:15:47]:
I think the advice would be understand whether the moments that matter most. So understand what means the most to your employees on the makeup of where they’re based, who they are. Understanding your workforce will tell you and gaining feedback from them will tell you where the experience is the most important. I think understanding that and then there is, there is a ton of ways that you can engage with vendors like us, with the wider market where people are talking about this, there’s lots of podcasts like the one that you’ve got here, so that people can learn about this and prioritize the areas where they can make the difference for users. So it’s not about. Because we need to balance this against realities. We can’t just go in tomorrow and say to the board, yeah, well, we need to upgrade the talent experience in all areas. I mean, it’s not achievable. And so often tech vendors, HR analysts, they talk about the idealisms that yes, it would be great if we have personalized user journeys for every single individual within our business, but the reality is we have a limited number of resources. We’re asking individuals that work with our business to constantly evolve and change the way that they know how to behave. So we need to realise and prioritise what is important. So if bringing people into your business is something that is absolutely critical, then yes, you need to look at the people you’re trying to build into your business and make sure the candidate experience is aligned and personal to their journey. It’s all about prioritising what the moments that matter for your workforce and understanding them, understanding the user experiences that should be personalized, they should be simple, they should be seamless, they should be in line with the journey that that user wants to take. So you really need to take the time to understand the users and that element of the employee that’s engaging with that part of the journey at that time, and then understanding what they want and building the experience that supports that. And that will be different depending on what type of organization you are and what are the drivers in your business for talent that make a difference.
Matt Alder [00:17:52]:
Final question, what is the future of talent experience look like?
Duncan Miller [00:17:57]:
I think the future is about organisers understanding their employees and what matters to them and understanding where they need depth and where they have the opportunity to offer personalization, which is one to one at one to many scale. So it’s about understanding what’s important and what means something to their culture. And it’s about understanding the different segments of talent within their business and what they want and then building infrastructures that support them to have a journey which is self directed, which allows them to engage and build a relationship with your organization and ultimately achieve for both sides to achieve what they want from this relationship.
Matt Alder [00:18:40]:
Duncan, thank you very much for joining me.
Duncan Miller [00:18:42]:
No problem, Matt. It was an absolute pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:18:45]:
My thanks to Duncan Miller and you can download our free talent experience white paper by going to bit ly recfuture1 that’s rec f u t u r e and then the number one, all in lowercase. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram, where we are recruiting Future if you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.dotrfpodcast.com on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
